design lab

A few weeks ago, we took Hackaday IRL and into hackerspaces around the globe. This was World Create Day, a community effort to come together and build something that matters. Think of it as the pre-game for the Hackaday Prize, our online competition to change the world by building hardware. The groups at these hacker meetups have sent in pictures and reported on what they created. What happened during this worldwide hacker meetup? So much awesome stuff.

The SupplyFrame Design Lab

Did you know Hackaday has its own Hackerspace? It’s true! We have an eight-foot ShopBot, a Tormach, we just got a rig to do injection molding, and apparently, the intern is busy setting up a resin printer.

There are a ton of really talented people associated with the Design Lab, and they were out in full force on World Create Day. [Diego] from Deezmaker has been working on robot muscles and customizable linear actuators for a while, so that was obviously the focus of his World Create Day. Everyone needs mirrored LED-equipped welding/steampunk goggles, so that was [Rich Cameron]’s build, pictured to the right.

A fabulous time was had by all, but just because this was only one of three World Create Day meetups hosted ‘officially’ by Hackaday doesn’t mean it was the biggest or the best. There was plenty of fun the world over.

Amritsar, India

World Create Day is a worldwide event, so of course we had a few events in the second most populous country on Earth. [Inderpreet], [Shubham], [Simrat], and [Navjeet] put together a World Create Day event at the Department of Electronics Technology at GNDU Amritsar, their local university. A slew of people showed up, [Inderpreet] gave a talk on The Hackaday Prize, and much fun was had by all.

FabLab San Diego

The Fab Lab in San Diego also hosted a World Create Day event, Projects that made the cut included a real time, IRL closed captioning device. Think of this one as a universal translator, but only one language, with a screen. Or a voice to text thing running on a phone. Either way. Other ideas included an improved mobility cart, an underwater autonomous robot, wireless communication nodes, pressurized algae incubators, and a whole bunch more.

The folks at the San Diego Fab Lab also produced a short video of their World Create Day activities, you can check that out below.

Last week the Supplyframe Design Lab in Pasadena opened it’s doors, welcoming in the community to explore the newly rebuilt interior which is now filled with high-end prototyping and fabrication tools and bristling with work areas to suit any need. I had a chance to pull a few people aside during the opening night party to talk about how the Design Lab came about and what we can expect coming out of the space in the near future.

Opening night was heavily attended. I recognized many faces, but the majority of those exploring the building were new acquaintances for me. This is likely due to a strong connection the Design Lab is building with the students, faculty, and graduates of the ArtCenter College of Design. Located just down the road, it is one of the top design schools in the world.

Wait a minute. We’re almost through June and we haven’t seen anyone’s ‘DIY air conditioning’ setup. Oh the shame! How could we ever argue about thermodynamics otherwise? Here’s some copper tubing wrapped around a fan. Does it make sense? Assuming you’re making the ice (or cold whatever) in a room separated from the crappy air con, and you don’t have to pay for electricity (or ice), and you don’t mind hauling buckets of ice every few hours, yes. It’ll work. Now we can argue if you should put salt in the ice water…

I know I mentioned this in last week’s links post, but [Arsenijs]’s Raspberry Pi project is growing by leaps and bounds. He already has more than 33 followers to this project (awesome!) and 3.3k views on his project page. Not only is it climbing in popularity, but this is also a great use for the Raspberry Pi. You don’t see projects like this come around very often.

The LimeSDR is a powerful next generation software defined radio that’s currently on CrowdSupply The crowdfunding campaign ends in just a few days. It’s a very impressive tool, able to send and receive anything from 100 kHz to 3.8 GHz.

Last week one of our writers posted a review on the Monoprice MP Select Mini 3D printer. This printer is becoming stupidly popular, and Monoprice has depleted their inventory twice since then. I’ve been watching the product page for this printer for a while now, and here’s what happens: 1) Printer is out of stock, with an ETA of about a month in the future. 2) Printer is still out of stock, ETA is a few days away. 3) Monoprice has this printer in stock. This cycle seems to repeat every week or so.

Arduino Raycasting. When you think of raycasting, you probably think about Wolfenstein 3D, or other barely 3D games. You don’t need a powerful CPU like a 386 for raycasting – you can do it on an Arduino. The display is a 32×16 matrix of LEDs, control is through a Wii Nunchuck, and yes, head-bobbing is implemented. Here’s a video.

The Supplyframe Design Lab in Pasadena, CA is opening soon. This space is dedicated to making great ideas reality. It is packed with state of the art tools, with plenty of room for classes and collaboration.

Professional level tools and an available workshop are just one piece of the puzzle. To be truly successful, great people need to bring the space to life with inspiring builds and forward thinking adventures. If you want to be part of this community, and have been contemplating an idea for your next product or project, consider applying for a funded residency.

Art, Product, and Technology projects will all be considered. Those selected will be funded up to $2,000 per month. We want to see ambitious projects realized at the Design Lab so don’t be afraid to think big. To help in curating the best projects to fund we’d like to see some of your previous work. If you haven’t already, please share some of your builds on Hackaday.io. The first round of funded projects can be under way as early as June 1st.

Right now we’re throwing a two-day hackathon in Pasadena. As with all hackathons, people are going to build something, but that’s only going to happen today. Yesterday was an incredible Zero to Product talk that goes over PCB layout techniques, manufacturing, and schematic capture. In a seven hour talk, our own [Matt Berggren] took the audience through building a product, in this case a little ESP8266 breakout board. We livestreamed this; the video (and electric pickles) are below.

Events include a ‘Zero to Product’ workshop that will take everyone through PCB design, manufacturing techniques, CAM, soldering, testing, and blowing up caps and releasing blue smoke. You can check out the live stream of that here (or below).

Later on this evening, we’ll be having a few short talks from some LA-area hackers, builders and engineers.

Tomorrow is Open Hack Day, where the Hackaday Design Lab will have tables filled with components, dev boards, soldering irons, and enough blinkey stuff to blind someone. Live stream below.